December West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures briefly rose above $100 a barrel Tuesday before slipping below $98, while Iran claimed mines had struck two tankers near the Strait of Hormuz.
A delayed NYMEX quote showed the December contract at $97.66 a barrel at 2:06 p.m. ET (18:06 UTC), down 0.89% from Monday’s settlement. Its recorded session high was $101.37. Earlier, Blue Line Futures put the contract at $100.70, up 2.21%.
Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) said mines laid by its navy had set two oil tankers on fire and stopped them in a southern passage of the strait. The IRGC named neither vessel and gave no time for the alleged strikes. The International Maritime Organization’s list of 116 confirmed regional maritime incidents as of Oct. 20 did not identify the tankers.
In its October outlook, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) traced a higher delivered oil bill for refiners to increased shipping and insurance charges on risky regional voyages. The agency estimated that oil flows through Hormuz averaged 4.9 million barrels a day in the second quarter of 2026, down from 21.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2025. Those figures are quarterly averages, not a measure of Tuesday’s traffic.
The EIA’s next weekly U.S. petroleum report is scheduled for Wednesday, Oct. 21, at 10:30 a.m. ET (14:30 UTC).
